Supermarkets, as well as other retail establishments, both large and small, quite frequently employ wheeled shopping carts freely provided to their patrons to facilitate simple, relaxed movement through the aisles of the retail establishment, allowing patrons to collect relatively large quantities of merchandise within the cart. The cart containing the selected items is then typically brought to a check-out counter where the selected items are paid for, bagged and quite frequently replaced in the shopping carts to facilitate the removal of the purchase from the premises and transportation of the selected items to the patron's vehicle.
Since shopping carts of the type described are rather large, it is extremely advantageous to limit the storage area as much as is practicable to avoid wasting precious store space. This is typically accomplished by providing shopping carts having a tapered configuration from front to rear and having a swingably mounted gate at the rearward end thereof which is pushed upwardly to facilitate insertion of the forward end of a shopping cart. This design permits any number of shopping carts to be nested together to reduce the amount of floorspace required for storage during non-use.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a basket for mounting to the forward end of a nestable shopping cart to thereby increase the overall carrying capacity of the cart without increasing the floorspace required for storage of the nested carts. This was accomplished in the prior art by the provision of a shopping cart attachment formed of wire and having a pair of hooks for joining the top end of the attachment to the top bar of a shopping cart provided at the forward end thereof. Note, for example, U.S. Pat. No. Des. 209,279 issued Nov. 21, 1967 to the present inventor. Messages and/or advertising material were provided by means of a thin metallic plate having its side portions wrapped around two substantially vertically aligned metallic ribs of the basket. The size and location of the shopping cart attachment permit the shopping carts to be nested together in the normal fashion without increasing the floor space required for shopping cart storage. Due to the expense of such metallic basket attachments, the number of ribs employed in the formation of the basket was necessarily kept to a minimum, yielding a basket which is quite limited as to the goods it is capable of storing. In addition, the sign is totally unprotected and is scratched and dented very easily and very quickly, destroying the effectiveness thereof in quite short order. The basket attachment further failed to provide any means for securement of the shopping cart attachment to the shopping cart which assembly prevents unnecessary jostling and/or swinging of the attachment basket. In addition, the design of the prior art basket attachment for shopping carts makes it highly impractical to remove and replace the sheet bearing the advertising and/or message material.